


The Itch

by VitaLupum



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:05:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VitaLupum/pseuds/VitaLupum





	The Itch

Medic found out at an early age about the dark pleasure of the Itch.

Bad feelings can infect a person, becoming a grain of grit in their soul that is coated in hatred and anger and sadness until finally it becomes a worthless black pearl of numbness that cannot be let out again. But the pain of it growing manifests itself in an Itch that nothing but the sharpest of knives can solve, and it was that which afflicted Medic.

He opened his eyes in the morning, and saw his mother's face every time he blinked, in such detail that he could sketch it, not that he wanted to. And every time he looked in the mirror, he saw in his hurt adolescent face the adult that his father was, the adult he would become. In every song that fell from his fingers when he played his violin was a song his mother would never dance to, never applaud, and in every vein flowed the blood of his father, thudding through his heart with every beat. He was everything his mother would never be again, and everything his father had failed to be.

So, when his eldest sister, Anneliese, a stony-faced young woman with the tongue of a serpent and the emotional capacity of two dead goldfish, killed herself unexpectedly, everything, everything he was coping with suddenly fell, like a shelf that had been overloaded.

And at that point, the Itch started.

He could feel it, as he walked about day to day, flowing in his rotten blood. It was as if something had come alive inside him and flowed through his vein like a worm, tickling from the inside out. Begging to be released.

And of course, when one is training to be a doctor, one finds out about some very interesting medical treatments from ages past.

Trepanation.

Bloodletting.

The latter sounded most intriguing.

One night, when he had almost failed an examination, when a birthday card from Anneliese from years ago had fallen out of his cupboard and landed on the floor where he had promptly trodden on it, where his other sister, Genoveva, had called him in tears saying her little son had been hit by a car – still alive, but his leg broken, possibly needing to be amputated – he gave in.

The scalpel – properly sterilized, of course – had not hurt, dragged across his skin. As the blood had begun to bead from the almost invisible cut, he stared at it in curious fascination, and as he stared, he noticed – the Itching had stopped.

His veins felt clean again.

It was a week later when the hatred and pain came back. It overcame him like a tsunami, so suddenly that, in the middle of a class, he began to weep silent tears. Nobody noticed, and he wiped them away, sticking the point of a compass he had in his bag into the heel of his hand.

But like anything that relieves sorrow and pain, these things become addictive.

Soon he was sneaking into the university bathrooms, watching fresh, bright blood carry his cares up from beneath the surface of his skin for it to fizzle away in the light of day. He experimented with different mediums – knives were good. Scalpels were better. Pins were awful and left ragged scars. Burns were not worth the after-pain and questioning looks. And it continued, like any dirty habit, under the surface of his everyday life.

It was funny, he mused as he wandered around the med bay at RED Base, but he had not harmed since he got there. Since he had signed the form to go, in fact.


End file.
